Sunday, November 15, 2009

Any excuse for a party

Mt. Bachelor hasn't enough snow yet to officially open. From a great distance — from Bend, for example — it looks as white as an ice cream cone but from a near distance you see the summit is pockmarked with black. Next weekend, they say. Snow is expected all this week; Mt. Bachelor should open next weekend.

The mountain's being technically closed keeps the tourists away but people still drive up from town. Snow-seekers. Hard-cores, some of them: the cinder cone already has interlocking snaking trails down every side. The Main Lodge parking lot this afternoon was like at a tailgate party — not that anyone stood around drinking (that happens later in the season), but there was the same atmosphere of excited anticipation. A few snowboarders had hiked up the Pine Marten run to fly down, skimming over jibs; others sat in the snow, watching, as snowboarders will do. Families were sledding, little kids shouting and laughing. In the parking lot one rig after another went wheee-heeee-hew! in glorious four-wheel power slides.

As for us, we hadn't brought sleds, so we drove to the far side of the parking lot, where other people had packed a trail. Not that my children actually stayed on a trail.


A thin crust on the snow held his weight ...




for a moment. The snow's chest-deep to a 7-year-old.



Hiking out at sunset. (That's, like, 4:30pm in mid-November.)

3 comments:

jo(e) said...

Oh, that looks great! I'm eager to get snow here but we haven't had any that really stuck yet.

Joie de Vivre said...

In the mid-60s and opened the windows yesterday and today. God, I don't know how you do it!

Magpie said...

Someone in my office just came back from lunch and told me she thought it felt like snow.

Your new template looks good.